Slideshow

Welcome to Herb Feith Foundation

The Herb Feith Foundation was established in 2003 to commemorate the life and work of Herb Feith (1930-2001), volunteer, scholar, teacher and peace activist.

As a volunteer graduate in Indonesia in the early 1950s, Herb inspired the formation of the Volunteer Graduate Scheme that later broadened into what is now Australian Volunteers International.

Herb was a distinguished scholar of Indonesian politics, and his 1962 book The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia remains the definitive study of Indonesia in the 1950s.

Herb’s teaching on Indonesia, Third World politics and peace studies inspired generations of students in Australia and Indonesia. He taught at Monash University from 1962 until he retired in 1990. He then returned to Indonesia as a volunteer again to teach at the Gadjah Mada University Centre for Security and Peace Studies.

Internationally known as a compassionate and intensely moral person, Herb championed important causes involving democracy, human rights and conflict resolution.

Set up by the Council of Monash University, the mission of the Foundation is to promote and support work of the kind to which Herb Feith devoted his life. It therefore aims to support the newly created Herb Feith Chair for the Study of Indonesia and other international educational activities in such fields as peace studies, human rights and conflict resolution. It also sponsors the Herb Feith Memorial Lectures.

An audio recording of Sidney Jones’ Herb Feith Memorial Lecture 2014 is now available on Youtube.
‘Lessons Learned from Indonesia’s Conflicts: Aceh, Poso and Papua’
Three conflicts which the Indonesian government has tried to solve offer some sobering lessons for the country’s next president. A peace agreement in Aceh stopped an insurgency but the former rebels proved to Read more

‘Indonesia after the elections: New directions or more of the same?’
Sidney Jones, Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, Jakarta
Tuesday,19 August 2014
Level 10, 114 William Street, Melbourne
5:30 for 6.00 pm start
RSVP: 14 August*
Peter McMullin & Cornwall Stodart in partnership with the Australian Institute of International Affairs Victoria invite you to attend this very special event.
Entry by Read more

More News

Sidney Jones is the Director of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC), which she founded in 2013 on the principle that accurate analysis is a critical first step toward preventing violent conflict. From 2002 to 2013, Jones worked with the International Crisis Group, first as Southeast Asia project director, then from 2007 as Read more

The Herb Feith Foundation is pleased to announce that the Indonesian translation of Jemma Purdey’s biography of Herb Feith has been published in Indonesian translation.
Translated by Santi Budiman and given the title, Dari Wina ke Yogyakarta: Kisah Hidup Herb Feith, the book was published by Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia, May 2014.
Buy the book online
Media: Tempo.co
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The Herb Feith Foundation has committed itself to supporting this visionary program—initiated by Sara to honour John’s memory—which aims to develop better understanding between Indonesians and Australians through the popular medium of film:
By encouraging young and emerging Indonesian and Australian filmmakers to make documentary and ethnographic films about each other’s country;
By making these films available Read more

This year’s first Herb Feith Foundation seminar, held on Wednesday 9 April 2014, was focused on the Australian filmmaker John Darling (1946-2011). It was well attended, with more than sixty people in the audience.
John’s wife Sara Darling spoke about how John came to live for two decades in Bali, about his meeting in Ubud with Read more

The launch of the David Hanan Collection of Indonesian Films on 3 March at Monash University, offered a rare opportunity to celebrate decades of study and dedication to Indonesian Film and culture and to experience some rare footage of a gone-by-era.
David Hanan has a long history of association with Monash University. After teaching literature at Monash Read more

Seminar 1: Screening of Lempad of Bali
Wednesday 9th April, 6 for 6.30pm,
Theatre HB36, Monash Caulfield campus
In this, the first in the Herb Feith Foundation series of seminars on Indonesia for 2014, we will be screening John Darling’s film Lempad of Bali.
All welcome!
Click here to see the flyer
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The Foundation is pleased to announce a grant to the Indonesian Resources and Information Program (IRIP), publishers of Inside Indonesia, to begin an extensive digitisation of the print editions of the magazine, 1983-2007. Inside Indonesia has been published online as a web-based magazine only since 2007.
Inside Indonesia was established in Melbourne by the Indonesian Resources and Information Program Read more

The inaugural issue of the International Journal of Indonesian Studies (IJIS) is now available!
Find it online by open access and to submit papers and find out more visit the IJIS website.
Papers
Author(s)
Title
Gin Gin Gustine
Designing and implementing a critical literacy-based approach in an Indonesian EFL secondary school
Eko NM Saputro
Indonesia’s Response towards East Asian Financial Regionalism
Monica Ella Harendita
Why Resist? A Read more

Now available to access for free online, the book in the Herb Feith Translation Series ‘Translating accounts of the 1965-66 mass violence in Indonesia’,
Truth Will Out: Indonesian accounts of the 1965-66 mass violence.
To read the book please visit Monash University Publishing.
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